CULTURAL PRODUCTION and TRANSMISSION of ETHNIC TOLERANCE and PREJUDICE: INTRODUCTION Hilary Pilkington and Anton Popov University of Warwick

Anthropology of East Europe CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND TRANSMISSION OF ETHNIC TOLERANCE AND PREJUDICE: INTRODUCTION Hilary Pilkington and Anton Popov University of Warwick This special issue is a collection of selected intolerance. Here we provide a brief, critical papers presented to workshops held under the review of two models of multi-ethnic societies auspices of the RIME (Releasing Indigenous envisaged and implemented in the twentieth Multiculturalism through Education) project. century before outlining their common failings RIME is an EU funded project under the and presenting an alternative approach. European Initiative on Democracy and Human Rights programme and brings together NGO Socialist Models of Multi-ethnic Living and academic partners from Bosnia and We start with the discussion of socialist Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, models because it is these particular ways of Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, and the envisaging the parallel promotion of ‘national’ UK. The project had two core aims: to and ‘cultural’ difference and political unity facilitate cross-regional NGO networking and that have shaped the experience of the region sharing of experiences; and to stimulate discussed in this volume. Socialist attempts to dialogue between the NGO and academic create the conditions for harmonious multi- communities. This special issue collates a ethnic living have been rooted in the number of research-based papers presented to conviction that it is the (capitalist, imperial) project workshops in order to stimulate this state that is ‘guilty’ and that its destruction and dialogue. These papers focus on young replacement by a state structure with a people’s experience of ethnic conflict, post- professed supra-ethnic identity, alongside the conflict and frozen conflict situations, or of encouragement of ‘state-free’ cultural living in multiethnic societies in which the production articulating ethnic, linguistic and ethnic stereotypes and prejudices of majority ‘cultural’ identities, is able to ensure the groups often go unnoticed and unchallenged. i tolerance of ethnic and cultural difference. In this introductory article the editors This model foundered, we suggest, not because set these papers in the wider context of the of profound and ancient ‘ethnic hatreds’ but academic debate to which they seek to because the supraethnic ideology that sought to contribute. This introduction thus has three supersede ethnic particularisms was built on a aims: to reflect critically on current debates universalist philosophy which professed that about ‘multiculturalism’; to outline a cultural class locations and solidarities prevailed over approach to ‘multiculturalism’ that challenges all others. This proved to be untrue or, more the reification of particular ‘cultures’ by accurately, untrue for the particular historical focusing on the everyday practices of multi- and cultural conjuncture in which it was ethnic living; and to highlight (with examples enacted. from the individual papers in this volume) how The internal conflict between the this approach can help us understand the principles of social, economic and political cultural production and transmission of ethnic modernisation, on the one hand, and promotion tolerance and prejudice among young people. of ethnic diversity and ethno-cultural particularism, on the other, was especially Same State, Different Cultures? Models for visible in the Soviet model of multiculturalism, Multi-Ethnic Societies which might be defined as ethno-territorial Models for multi-ethnic living are premised on federalism. The Soviet project of social the recognition that societies are racially, modernisation was accompanied by the ethnically and culturally diverse. They all also manifestation, promotion and creation of share a commitment to balancing the need for reified cultural differences by the a sense of ‘collective belonging’ at state level institutionalisation of ethnicity through the whilst allowing ethnic and cultural differences implementation of the korenizatsiia to be articulated and respected throughout (indigenisation) projects in the 1920s (Slezkine society. They diverge from one another, 1996: 214-225; Tishkov 1997: 27-31) and subsequent official ‘affirmative-action’ arguably, in relation to both their ii understanding of the primary unit of that programmes targeting ‘titular nationalities’ diversity (racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, (see Gitelman 1992; Martin 2001; Suny 1993). ‘cultural’) and in their identification of the key The political and administrative structures in site of social intervention for the eradication of the national autonomies were formed in a way Volume 26, No. 1 Page 7 Anthropology of East Europe that reflected the ethnic composition of the Herzegovina of Muslim faith (as well as the region or territory. As a rule, the Muslim population of the Sandžak region of representatives of titular nationalities Serbia, see Obradović’s article in this volume). predominated among republic or regional Echoes of Soviet reification of ethnicity were officials. The new political classes in the evident, however, even in non-federated national autonomies were formed by recruiting socialist states, like Romania and Bulgaria, for new members of the Communist Party example in ethnic quotas for Party membership predominantly from the titular ethnic groups (Verdery 1996: 86). In Bulgaria, moreover, the (Suny 1993: 103). As Suny states, in the Soviet Soviet logic of institutionalised personal ethnic Union, ‘[titular] nationality had taken on a new identification was apparent in the compulsory importance as an indicator of membership in name-changing campaign to which ethnic the relevant social and cultural community’ Turks and other Muslim minorities were (121). subjected by the communist regime in the The ethnic self-identification of 1970s-80s (Poulton 1993: 130). Soviet citizens was institutionalised through The growth of ethnonationalism in the the organisation of government and post-Soviet space, which coincided with administration along ethno-territorial lines and profound transformations in all spheres of life, by classifying the population by nationality seems to provide evidence supporting Layton’s (Brubaker 1996: 30-31). In the final days of argument that the salience of ethnicity depends the Soviet Union, the world witnessed on its political usefulness. This, he suggests, ethnonationalism emerging from the legacy of increases in unstable conditions, when people Soviet ethno-federalism and the fear the current leadership cannot protect them institutionalised personal ethnic identifications and respond by returning to their local of Soviet citizens. In Brubaker’s words, ‘the networks (Layton 2006: 135). At the same Soviet institutions of territorial nationhood and time, in the former USSR these networks personal nationality comprised a ready-made became effective political and economic template for claims to sovereignty, when institutions existing as parallel, and sometimes political space expanded under Gorbachev’ rival, structures to the state partly because of (24). the successful implementation of the Soviet The Soviet nationalities policy and its model of multiculturalism (Suny 1993: 115). institutional operationalisation was used to a Thus, paradoxically, Soviet nationalities policy greater or lesser extent as a template in other liberated and modernised the ethnically diverse socialist countries. The similarities are most population of Russia whilst simultaneously evident in the cases of the former Yugoslavia promoting the emergence of bounded ethnic and, to a lesser degree, in Czechoslovakia; entities based on rather essentialist both theses states were constituted as ethno- understandings of ethnicity and culture which territorial federations and thus the principle of have been used subsequently to explain, if not ethnic/national difference was ‘constitutionally justify, inter-group or inter-community enshrined’ (Verdery 1996: 58). In these tensions. countries, therefore, socialism might be said to have naturalised and reinforced ethnic Western Models of Multi-ethnic Living differences although such differences had been Western, post-imperial attempts to address present as a political issue in Central and South ethnic/racial intolerance focused initially on Eastern Europe since the growth of exposing the ‘scientific’ underpinnings of nationalism in the region in the nineteenth racism as erroneous and introducing legislation century. In (former) Yugoslavia, for example, that protected individuals against racist acts. In the institutionalisation of ethno-territorial the last quarter of the twentieth century, federalism resulted in the redefinition of however, anti-racism was superseded in many religious identities as ethnic and national. Thus western countries by a more proactive notion the ethnic category ‘Muslim’ was created for of ‘multiculturalism’. Multiculturalism differs Serbo-Croat speaking Muslims in the from anti-racism in that it seeks not only to federative republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and punish, and ultimately eradicate, racial, ethnic some other areas of Yugoslavia (Poulton 1993: and religious intolerance, but also to promote 39). After the disintegration of the Yugoslav the positive social and cultural impact of state this ethnic category has been transformed interaction and communication between into that of ‘Bosniak’ (Bošnjak); an ethnonyme diverse ‘cultural’ communities (defined, more that has clear reference to the state of Bosnia

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